Obama’s warning yesterday that failure to act quickly on the stimulus “will turn crisis into a catastrophe” demonstrates both the President’s great strengths as a communicator and what may well become his fatal flaw. First the strengths: I don’t know who writes this stuff, Obama himself, his ace speechwriter, or some symbiotic combination of the […]

Ed makes a good point, to wit that opposing this stimulus pork pie carries certain risks. But then so does going along with it, which would completely and utterly shred any remaining Republican credibility on fiscal responsibility. Clearly it isn’t enough to simply oppose, however. The anti-pork faction has to make their case and they […]

I imagine other people hear about Citi’s reluctance to give up its new $50 million private jet, financed by the taxpayer’s $45 billion bailout of the company, and of the $1.2 million used to renovate the bathroom of Merrill Lynch’s CEO, and they think things like “corporate greed,” “arrogance,” “supreme cluelessness.” I, however, think of […]

Words matter, so it’s time that Republicans stopped calling this a “stimulus package.” It has nothing to do with stimulating the economy, it’s simply a political payoff to Democrat constituency groups on a scale so massive it’s mind boggling. This is Chicago politics on steroids. It makes Blagojevich look like a piker (though it’s all […]

I promise not to make any more stimulus jokes, but I couldn’t resist this. Seems that Larry Flint is asking for a bailout for Hustler Magazine. Why not? From a purely economic view, it makes about as much sense as many of the other companies that are bellying up snout first at our ever expanding […]

Economists may find trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see to be exciting. Personally, it takes me right out of the mood. It seems every one has decided that Richard Nixon was right after all, and we’re all Keynesians once again. Just so the Democrats realize: when the inevitable inflation follows, it’s […]

Anne Applebaum makes some good points in her op-ed today on the similarity in Presidential rhetoric across time and parties. I can’t help but feel, however, that when she compares conservative hero Ronald Regan to liberal icon John Kennedy, Reagan comes off by far the best. Both gave moving speeches at the Berlin Wall, but […]